Cal Grants cuts will hurt La Verne

State budget cuts in recent years have caused California public colleges to deny admission to hundreds of thousands of students.

In 2014 students at California’s private colleges and Universities stand to suffer in the face of devastating budget cuts, this time to Cal Grants.

Since 1955 the Cal Grant program has provided students who attend private colleges with scholarship money.

The program provides about $1.6 billion a year to help 394,000 California college students at private colleges. This includes 33,000 private college students

However, the maximum number to students attending private colleges and universities is decreasing. This fall the Cal Grant scholarship award will decrease by $1,000 to roughly $8,100 a year for students attending a California private college.

The cuts will affect nearly all University of La Verne students starting college in 2014.

The lost funding not only affects those who attend the private universities, but it affects public institutions as well.

UCs have become harder to get into due to the academic standard they set. This over-populates the CSUs with the students who were not accepted by the UCs. In turn, community colleges would have to turn away more students also.